OPM Disability Retirement Lawyer: The Ballerina’s Pirouette

It is an awkward word to pronounce, and even more difficult to perform; but a full turn of the body on one’s toe or the ball of one’s foot, multiplied at dizzying speed while the world remains still or aghast with onlookers of disbelief, is but a day’s work for the stage performer.

Practice makes perfect, and the time, energy, pain and history of falls and mistakes preceding a single performance before an audience anticipating unsteady bouts of dizzying falls, where simple tasks of walking or standing are the only points of contextual reference and understanding, it is indeed an amazing feat of grace, balance, determination and pinnacle of human perfection. It is a showcase of physical coordination: the capacity to find the center of gravity upon a singular digit of extremity, and to twirl without falling from grace.

Human tragedies are like metaphors of such acts; for, as the world remains still, one’s own universe spins in a twist of timeless moment ensconced without empathy or consideration by others.

For Federal employees and U.S. Postal workers who suffer from a medical condition, such that the medical condition begins to impact one’s ability and capacity to perform the essential elements of one’s positional duties, the circumstance itself is likened to the act of a ballerina’s pirouette: one’s own world is a twirl in time, while the greater objective universe remains impassive, dispassionate, unconcerned and mere observers of an inner sanctuary gone mad but from all appearances remaining the same.

It is difficult to convey in a persuasive or convincing manner such conceptual anomalies as “pain”, “depression”, “cognitive dysfunction”, “radiating pain“, “despondency”; words are not experiences, but they are the vehicle of transference for comprehension, understanding and relational convergence. Watching the act of a pirouette is not the same as experiencing it; but finding the right words to describe it can come as close as possible for the necessary intersection of understanding.

For the Federal or Postal worker who needs to file for Federal Disability Retirement benefits through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether the Federal or Postal worker is under FERS, CSRS or CSRS Offset, the ability to perform a pirouette is not a requirement, and it is not even mandatory that one can properly pronounce the word without a twisted tongue.

What is required, however, is to be able to convey effectively the spinning universe as experienced by one’s medical condition, such that the administrative specialist at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management can come as close to the experiential context of one’s deteriorating human condition as possible by a formulated convergence of concepts communicated via the greatest singular tool of Mankind: the written word.